


dead trees give no shelter

by buckstiel



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Memories, Sexual Content, The Desolation, The End, Trans Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Trans Melanie King, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:55:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24728572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: The world suffers under the careful gaze of the Panopticon; but Georgie and Melanie continue trekking forward.
Relationships: Background Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Past Georgie Barker/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	dead trees give no shelter

**Author's Note:**

> waiting impatiently for these two to show up in s5
> 
> takes place right after ep170. title from the wasteland by ts eliot. unbeta'd

It’s Melanie who stops them, as it tends to be in what Georgie refuses to call a wasteland--she says it’s because they don’t need to frost over the horrors with something so trite, but other older habits die hard, a reluctance to throw the word about in casual conversation on the uni quad lest Jon start going on about April being the cruelest month. Now they have nothing but Aprils.

Enough about Jon.

It’s Melanie who stops them, turning her head at an odd angle to the right, toward something assumedly. She says nothing. Georgie follows the line of her tilted head and spots, emerging from a cloud-like knot of fog, a house so generic that it defies all description aside from its sheer size. First the eaves pressed through the haze, then the windowsills, then finally the door, which bursts open in a muffled crash as two figures, wrapped around each other, stumble back onto the dusty, barren road.

When Melanie sighs, it’s halfway to a grumble.

Distance is impossible to estimate from a glance nowadays. They were in Scarborough when the world cracked open, barely unpacked. Melanie had recovered enough for travel and London deserved to be left behind, but the path before them has flattened so severely that what can only be the newest manifestation of the Magnus Institute looms over them like it’s just a short hike down the road. And they haven’t been traveling long enough for that to be true.

So the house in the fog--could be a short jog away, could be what used to be Leeds. Whatever the span, it’s been placed close, likely on purpose. The curve of Melanie’s frown grows more pronounced, and after a beat Georgie gets it.

Melanie says, “It’s a shame Tim’s not alive for me to collect on that bet.”

Georgie says, “Ugh.” Pauses, runs her thumb along the crook of Melanie’s arm, and she tries to reconsider. “I mean. Good for him. Them. I guess.”

A gnarled dead tree groans as Jon, walking backwards, leads Martin by both hands until he’s shoved up against it, a fervor in the way Martin kissing him that Georgie could have hardly predicted. The distance is uncertain but flat, and what Georgie hears from Jon suggests that time has become just as flat. The low humming under someone’s--hers--Martin’s--touch.

( _Enough about Jon_.)

Georgie says, “You think they saw us?”

Melanie snorts so hard she coughs on it. “Jon’s only got eyes for that boy right now. And I mean every single fucking eye.”

After the third time she said something like this, Georgie resolved not to ask how she knows. So she just nods, and the quirk of Melanie’s mouth lets her know she felt it. This, too, she doesn’t ask about.

Melanie says, “At least we know now Jon’s not holed up there with Public Enemy Number One. Clearly something went wrong in his _grand scheme_.” The quirk splits into a wide grin, and she holds two middle fingers up toward Georgie’s eyes--she misses by a few inches, but Georgie gently brings them right before her pupils, staring at the dirt lining the whorls of her fingerprints. It was a familiar sight, as Melanie found reason to remind Elias of her opinion of him once a day at least in the only open channel they have available to them.

Georgie says, “Sure.” She pushes one of Melanie’s hands away, holds the other close to press a kiss to the inside of her wrist inside the faded grey lines of a stick-and-poke tattoo that was, at some point, supposed to have been a ghost. “Let’s not dwell on it.” And Melanie makes a sound that conveys her wholehearted agreement, because they’ve both had enough of Jon to last a hundred lifetimes, and all this--it’s his problem anyway. They just have to survive it.

So they continue on the path under their feet as it veers sharply left, what was maybe once east, and the still snogging couple against the tree dips under the horizon out of site. A waste of time, all things considered. Georgie knows she’s projecting, but it almost seems as if the all-encompassing, unblinking eye looming overhead holds a sheen of judgment. She tries not to think about the night they shared half a handle of cheap vodka when they each had final exams the next morning, how Jon had accidentally kicked her notes off the bed in a fit of drunken laughter at some joke she can only remember didn’t make any sense. How Jon’s bleary grogginess at sunrise was the same in her dingy uni flat as it was on her couch with the Admiral making biscuits on his thigh. She tries not to think how he can help tank both her orgo grade and their entire dimension of existence like it’s nothing.

Of course, she can’t think of anything else, and Melanie grips her hand harder, whistling so far under her breath that it’s impossible to accuse her of being out of tune.

( _Enough. About. Jon._ )

Melanie says, “D’you think with all this going on that the dead were allowed to stay dead?” The flattened sense of time holds close but Georgie guesses it’s about half an hour before Melanie continues, “That building on fire. Something wasn’t right with it.”

Georgie says, “You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.”

But she knows what she means. They passed it a while back and the flames swirled around the brick and drywall like monstrous claws holding it fast to an invisible breast. Again that impossible concept of distance away, and Melanie stopped to--not stare, but take in. Behind her scratched aviator sunglasses, she squinted out of habit, her hand flying toward Georgie’s a moment before a plume of fire erupted from the roof, curving backward in the same arch of a spine ablaze in pain.

It’s not the most intuitive comparison, but it was the first to come to mind.

Georgie says, “Well?”

Melanie sighs. “I just wonder.”

Georgie doesn’t know what to say to that, so she doesn’t try. And it’s a futile gesture to look toward the horizon, but her eyes drift there anyway; Melanie isn’t talking, and her own thoughts keep circling the same drain, and it’d be nice to have some warning before they come up on the next horrific hurdle. She knows better than to expect such a warning, the landscape that uniform barren gray-brown until suddenly it isn’t and they’re twenty good steps from some new concentration of suffering.

Again Melanie stops. They’ve come upon another knobbly dying tree whose roots strain into the dusty, cracked earth. She sighs, but this time it’s less weary than simply bored. “Can we sit for a bit?” And they do, both aware that they don’t need to. And Melanie pulls out a sleeve of graham crackers from her bag though she knows they don’t need that either. It’s just something to do, a slight sweetness to break up the monotony. “Where are we even going? Not there I hope.” She gestures behind her at the Panopticon. “I’m not helping him.”

Georgie says, “I know.”

Melanie says, “That’s internal Institute business. Sure, the world sucks this way, but Jon was the one who shit the bed, so he’s got to be the one to unshit it.”

Georgie grins. “Unshit it?”

“I said what I said.”

“I think there’s something poetic in a blind woman bringing about the destruction of The Eye.”

“Georgie…”

Her chest seizes like she’s been stabbed. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m through with it.”

“I know.”

She watches Melanie nibble at the corner of the last graham cracker in the sleeve, crumbs falling to the ground and losing themselves amid the dirt. Her hair has grown steadily since they left Scarborough; the tips are just out of reach of her shoulders, electric green against the grey windbreaker, and what was once just her roots straining against the dye has spread into a crown, blue-black. Georgie had done it herself their last night in London, haphazard, a balancing act between following the instructions on the box and parsing through the amendments Melanie tossed up at every turn.

Melanie says through the graham cracker, “So. Where _are_ we going?”

“Not to the Institute. Not if you don’t want to.”

Melanie smiles, a brief thing that fades as quickly as a lightning bolt. “What the hell did you ever see in him, Georgie? He’s a right prick.”

This time she wants to shout it-- _Enough! About Jon!_ \--but he was just there, in sight. And isn’t he always just over their shoulders, or overhead, with the way the sky blinks down on them? So she takes Melanie’s question, holds it in her palm, rubs her thumb over all the different facets and odd corners.

What did she ever see in him? “It was uni. There were a lot of different things I saw in him.”

Maybe it would be more accurate to say she saw a lot of different versions of him, layers peeling back until they were left with the true core, but they were all still him. The standoffish classmate who sat in the back of the lecture hall, wandering the halls flipping through a new book every other day, and they’d been assigned a group project together in their discussion section. And he’d been nice. They were friends, after. People stopped snickering at his prudish wardrobe as he strode by--within a month he and Georgie were arm in arm, and he’d let her cut his hair and pierce his eyebrow, and he’d figured out how to noodle around enough on a bass guitar to fill the vacancy in her awful punk band.

They had a good few years. “Hard to say how it fell apart.”

Which was a lie, utterly and completely. The path of it was easy to trace, comically so, to the point that they should have identified the dirt beneath their feet long before it dumped them out at the lip of a ravine. They’d been so sure it would work--Georgie loved him, after all. Loved him past what she’d thought possible, like the overflow had repurposed the hollow left by her absent fear. She loved how he listened, how he read up on things in his spare time to give more informed feedback on her essays, how he would try any unknown food not just once, but at least three times in three different ways. She loved watching him unfurl from himself and laugh even when he knew others were watching. She loved the trust he put in her--first so tentative and then with his full weight, no space in between, how even when he was scared of needles he could watch her fingers handle the syringe, his thigh, the hormones pressing into his muscle without trembling.

Melanie says, “Hard to know or hard to say out loud?”

Georgie sighs, and Melanie grabs her hand, letting the graham cracker drop into her lap. “He’s the only person who’s ever made me wish I could be into men. He was upset but understood, said something about him being ‘two different people, after all.’ But I never saw it that way. Not until--”

Melanie snorts, and to anyone but Georgie it would have been so very unbecoming. “Not ‘til you had some pre-eldritch abomination sleeping on your couch? Yeah. I get it.”

How odd it had been to find The Admiral happily curled against such an utterly wrong but familiar face, one that watched her even with the eyes snapped shut in sleep.

Georgie says, “It’s fine. These aren’t exactly new feelings, and they’re not helpful.”

Melanie nods, hoists herself to her knees still holding Georgie’s hand, using it as a guide until she’s sitting in her lap, knees pressed to her hips. “Still gotta get them out sometimes.” She kisses Georgie’s forehead, runs her dull fingernails through the short-cropped hair just starting to curl into something soft, and it’s never sat right with her to lean so hard into feeling good when she only has to focus to hear the screaming, but she lets herself lean back against the dead tree and sigh.

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“If you’re looking for a pressure valve, I can think of a few other options.”

She doesn’t wait for Georgie to ask--capturing her bottom lip between her teeth, the back of her hand dragging down her neck, and caught in the middle of the good painful sharpness and the gentleness pressed against her pulse, Georgie’s head fuzzes into silence. Her arms wrap around Melanie’s stomach. She can only follow the trail of Melanie’s fingers, the hot circles that run down the back of her head or climb up her ribs. Hazily she tracks the course of her own hands, how they land on Melanie’s hips, fight with the zipper and reach--she strokes slowly, and there’s a cold spot on her neck where Melanie was working her tongue, when her head falls back and the dense quiet of the nothingness around them absorbs her groans.

Georgie says, “You’re too good to me.”

Melanie lets loose something close to a sob, though she’ll deny it later.

Georgie says, “There’s no way I could’ve made it all this way alone.”

Her hand keeps at it though her muscles start to burn, and Melanie buries her face into the crook of Georgie’s neck--and it’s this Georgie is angriest about, Melanie still stuck in this horror after everything, after putting a knife between herself and the Institute and then into both of her eyes. There was no way to escape, and there’s no way to know how much Jon truly knew.

Or--how much that _creature_ really knew, because at this point, to Georgie, that man is not who once stole her heart over Eliot scansions.

In her arms, Melanie heaves to catch her breath, offering kisses to various points along Georgie’s jaw when she can spare the moment. Time no longer matters and Georgie wants to indulge it, let it give her something for once. She holds her, hums against the secure embrace Melanie gives in return; and if this were the actual end of the world, this gray winking out for good into a void, she might have been okay with it.

After a long while, Melanie says, “So if we’re not going to London, can we backtrack? I have an idea.”

*

The Bone Road is maybe the worst place Georgie has ever been, and they maneuvered their way through the Sick Village and that terrible flesh garden in what she would consider the last week. The rest of the wasteland is quiet, of course, but the silence on the Bone Road leans against your eardrums like they’re about to pop, and her exposed sliver of ankle between her socks and the bottom of her trousers feels like bait for hungry bony teeth.

Melanie says, “That’s a bit dramatic. They’re dead, not _undead_. I think.”

In the distance, a lone figure ambles along the path set for them, dark grey against cloudy ash, indistinct.

Georgie says, “We avoided this place last time. Why are we back?"

Melanie holds up a hand. “I know this place isn’t abandoned! I can feel you!”

A low rumble of bass shudders under their feet before Georgie has a chance to ask what Melanie means by _being able to feel_. She blinks a few times facing a dark cloud of dirt and when the scene clears, a thin handsome man stands before them, cloaked in deep black wisps of smoke.

He says, “So what do you want?” His eyes shine a blinding silver in the dim light. “I didn’t expect anyone but the Archivist to be able to move freely in these parts, but I’m not averse to surprises.”

Georgie can’t feel fear but something else creeps up the back of her neck, suspicion, or wariness, or perhaps just a neutral curiosity. She can’t place who this man is, if Melanie would know his identity from her time at the Institute, or even what her plan is. She didn’t share much on their trek back, offering little more than quiet murmuring about hell and the dead and where that left the rest of them.

Melanie says, “Great. You’re the great grim reaper, right? Do you keep track of everyone who died before all this went down, or were they whisked off somewhere else?”

The man cocks his head to the side. “That’s an interesting request. But yes, those people are all here, just not the ones you’re looking for.”

The heat of Melanie’s spikes of anger sear against Georgie’s palm, and through the pain her grip squeezes through it. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t need to.”

Melanie turns on her heel and leads Georgie away, back down a well-trodden path she vaguely recognizes as south. Looking over her shoulder, she watches the man dissipate in the wind, layer by layer in a void-black curl of fog.

*

Before long, that burning apartment building is before them once, close enough that the soles of Georgie’s shoes start to melt against the ground, pulling apart in thin webs of rubber whenever she lifts her feet. She stands far back from the blaze, watches as Melanie strides forward in a defiant silhouette against the furious oranges and yellows and shouting against the crackles and roars. There’s someone she’s searching for and Georgie can’t place it. Can’t offer help. So she stands to the side and wills her stinging eyes to calm, just for a moment, until she can understand what Melanie is after.

Windows shatter against the fists of fireballs and shadows follow after, rushing toward the ground with flailing, resigned limbs. Portions of the remaining fire escapes glow red-hot, whine against the holds held in the mortar before falling. Those crashes are the worst, metal and fire on bone, any choking cries for help seared shut.

And still Melanie rages.

Georgie can’t leave her like this, as much as she wants to respect her plans. Slowly, fighting the sticky mess her shoes leave behind, she approaches her side. She grabs Melanie’s closest hand between both of her own and follows the tears rolling down past the border of her sunglasses until they vanish into steam.

She’s calling for Tim. She’s turning north, toward a distant set of blinking lights, an immeasurable distance away, calling for Sasha.

She says, “Mel. Sweetheart--please, look at me.”

“If they weren’t in the Bone Road, where are they?”

“Melanie--”

“The Magnus Institute can’t just let you die a normal death, can it? They still had their eyes, they still had its hooks in them--”

“Wh--”

“If it’s just Jon and Martin, we’re doomed.”

There’s nothing she can say to that. She knows Jon and the nights he spent pressed against her in chilly basements and suspicious graveyards, gripping her wrist like a lifeline. She doesn’t know Martin, and she doesn’t know the being that now claims to be Jon. And Elias, with his gaze enveloping the world in its borders, what is she supposed to do against that?

Georgie catches her breath in the heat, says, “But we have you. We have you. Elias didn’t count on you.”

“It’s not--”

“Melanie. You can sense past what any of us can see. I know it. You led us here. Maybe to Tim or Sasha, maybe not, but _something_ called you.” Her hands latch on the side of Melanie’s face. “Listen.”

The sunglasses have slid down Melanie’s nose, and she closes her eyes against the smoke and flame pouring over Georgie’s shoulders. Her brow knits in focus, fingers weaving through Georgie’s, head coming to rest on her shoulder.

After long last, Melanie says, “They’re idiots. We have to follow them.”

Georgie tilts her chin up to meet her fogged-over gaze. “You sure?”

Melanie grits her teeth, and something behind her sunglasses flashes sharply red. “As ever.” She takes a deep breath, kisses Georgie like it’s the one act keeping her standing. “It’s time to admit I want to be the one to pull it all down.”


End file.
